Saturday, December 30, 2006

STRANGE BUT TRUE FEAT OF THE YEAR, CENTURY AND MILLENNIUM: Finally, if you needed convincing that literally anything is possible in baseball, we refer you to the astounding finish of the Dodgers' Sept. 18 game with San Diego. They entered the bottom of the ninth trailing by four runs. And then...

The same team that was last in the league in home runs (the Dodgers) hit four ninth-inning home runs in a row to tie the game.

And did it in a span of seven pitches.

And hit them off two pitchers (Jon Adkins and Trevor Hoffman) who had given up three homers all season to the previous 432 hitters they'd faced, in a combined 108 appearances.

And then, after falling behind in the top of the 10th, the same team hit another homer in the 10th to turn a loss into a win.

If Hollywood slapped that on the big screen, you'd laugh. But this happened in actual life, in the greatest sport on earth.

"It might be the most amazing thing that ever happened in sports," Dodgers coach Rich Donnelly told our Strange But True bureau. "It's like the Stanford band thing -- without the trombones."